Delven

I am not a big management game fan. This game's description pulled me in with some idle, base building, and combat aspects. They have managed to put together an experience that covers all this, crafting, exploring, some combat (I haven't gotten to any 'tactical boss fights' yet), but haven't bogged down my brain with too much depth, or too many layers of individual character management. It's a great balance of activities put together with an interesting art style and some sometimes silly voice lines. I can sit here watching a stream on Twitch and not die due to real time constraints and starvation mechanics because I space out and don't touch the game for ten minutes. I like my games around five dollars, but this one is a good value for the price (ten dollars at this time). I will get plenty of hours out of it myself, and think a casual, idle game enjoyer will find it a good buy. Edit: I posted this last thing before going to bed. I stayed up playing four more hours before going to bed.

I thought initially I'd like it and play it often (even gave it a positive review, little did I know..), I was wrong. I ran into a couple of bugs, but no CTD. I'm was logging in once or twice a day for 10 minutes to give crafting orders and collect resources (usually run out anyway). Developer seems absent. Not sure if it's another abandoned EA project. Game is not optimized. I was lagging before I even reached a the first obstacle (swamp). Guessing it was 1/4 of the way down. The whole time I played I was struggling to get anywhere. It draws you in and makes it seem like a great game. But once you hit 6 hrs it becomes repetitive and tedious. After playing this for 20 hrs, I'm bored to death. I can see how the rest of the game will go. Extremely grindy (I can't even tell you how grindy it is). I've played a lot of grindy games, but this one is king. You completely run out of the basic resources and are forced to constantly get more and more for little gain. Mines hardly give you any ores or sandstone, you'll always be out of minerals. Also you can't just get sandstone as ore has to be present. Nothing to do but combat or log in every 2-6 hrs to collect resources. Combat gets boring too (always fighting the same), you barely get any resources for what you're fighting. Let alone actually get gear that you can only get thru combat. Some gear I've never find or it's locked for farther down. There's just too much reliance on offline progress. Especially when something takes 6 hrs to craft. Sure I can craft for less time, but you hardly get anything. I'm sure it gets worse and more and more time as you progress most likely to the point where it's going to take days to get enough resources to do something. You will find yourself constantly out of energy leading to frustration with this game. Why does every game insist on either using energy or stamina. I don't get this mentality. It doesn't make the game any better. A timer on everything and energy just to draw it out pointlessly. Let me play it, not having to constantly wait. You have to craft all the buildings and constantly the digging tools. You start at the top by using 1 shovel per tile, the lower you go the more shovels you need to use per tile. Eventually you come to a stop and can't do anything but log in every few hours later, collect, dig a little over and over. Minerals, you hardly get any and you constantly need more and more. Different buildings in different biomes craft different things. There's a research skill tree and 2 others for each of the classes. You only have 3 classes with limited spell slots. Elementalist - just casts fire all the time (on auto) (oddly nothing on the research tree for fire). The other spells are useless except the mana spell. Lots of research for lightning that you'll never use. Druid - just has 1 minion (with low hp) and only heals the first mercenary you hire. Other one kept dying. Necromancer - 2 types of minions. Every spell costs life and mana. Expect this one to die lot. Without minions you can't win any battles unless they are very easy ones. The farther down you go, expect to die a lot without minions since they absorb all damage. I ended up restarting since I tried with only Elementalist. You eventually unlock auto combat. But still have to watch it unfold. You even have to research faster animations. You unlock extra mercenaries as you progress thru the research tree. I'm at 3 and and a little farther then 1/3 down I think. You're limited on how many people you can have. Another mechanic to slow you down. With regular stations you have to constantly wait to craft (and use energy). People craft for you, but take hours and hours, but use no energy. You find contracts for citizens you employ in your buildings. Initially you start with 5 mins to 2 hrs crafting time. I'm at 3-6 hrs now. You also eventually unlock multi crafting (research). All buildings next to each other craft the same thing (it's good and bad). Initially in the tutorial I didn't want to build 3 sawmills. Now I understand why. I have around 50+ now all next to each other. But can I craft on all of them, usually no due to energy again. Have yet to find the edge of the map or how far down it goes. At this point I don't even care. Summary: Energy requirement for crafting. It's just too grindy to be enjoyable. I fight in a level 30 dungeon to get 5 resources, yeah, that makes sense but only to the dev. You grind for little gain. Too dependent on offline progress to get things crafted and 10 minutes later you're done and ready for more offline progress over and over (this alone makes it boring n and repetitive). Some things you have to research that you should initially have access to. This game also needs achievements, without that, there's no point in playing it as you really have no goal to achieve. I uninstalled it, too grindy, tedious, and boring, constantly waiting for energy or the timers. I'll check back eventually. But since there has been no activity since July 2025 (6 months ago), I don't expect much to change.

I had a great time so far. The core game play loop is engaging and keeps me curious to see what else there is to explore. The character voices are really funny and it's always cool to see equipment actually affect how characters look. Would recommend!